OverviewEstablished in 1968, the Wheaton Literary Series provides insightful books for the thoughtful reader, inspiring imagination, and reflection. These beautifully produced volumes feature prose and poetry of high literary, academic, and artistic merit, written by and about Christian artists of significant stature.

Publishers DescriptionThis new collection of poetry follows in the tradition of Luci Shaw's greatest books, such as" Listen to the Green, The Secret Trees, and The Sighting."

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More About Luci Shaw

Luci Shaw, author of Colossians, is writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. The author of several books of poetry and prose, including The Angles of Light and Friends for the Journey (with Madeleine L'Engle), Shaw lectures on the arts, poetry, and Christian spirituality and leads frequent writers' workshops.

We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing, so each thing gets noticed. . . so that Creation need not play to an empty house. -Annie Dillard

The key scene in M. Night Shyamalan's film Signs comes when Graham Hess (Mel Gibson) and his brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) are discussing the implications of what seems to be an alien visitation, signaled by a number of lights that have appeared over Mexico City:

People --- break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck or a coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence that there is Someone out there watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck, a happy turn of chance. Well sure there are people in group number two are looking at those 14 lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation isn't fifty/ fifty could be bad, could be good , but deep down they feel that whatever happens, they are on their own, and that fills them with fear.

Yeah, there are those people, but there's a whole lot of people in group number one. When they see those fourteen lights they are looking at a miracle. And deep down they feel that whatever is going to happen, there will be Someone there to help them, and that fills them with hope.

So what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles, or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or look at the question this way --- is it possible that there are no coincidences?

Luci Shaw's poetry is based on the thrill of finding those signs in the everyday, of having faith that it is God who has placed them there and hope because of that.

A few examples will serve to give the flavor of the batch and speak far more eloquently than can I:

We know this to start with:

If we understood everything we wouldn't be baffled. But mystery lives; somehow without witchcraft or chicanery

we collect sounds and colors in a skyward dish, like fruit in a bowl, and channel them into verisimilitude--faces talking at us

from the tube's glass eye. Hallways of fog enfold us in enigma. And then, the marvel of window glass--how can anything be

hard enough to stop the hand and hold its smudge while letting through this soft light? The one wheat kernel that

breeds a thousand--a miracle of loaves over and over again. The stars, invisible in the blind day

revealed, thick as pollen, by the absence of light. A billion spiky grass blades that melt into a perfectly flat horizon. The Holy Ghost

One spring in Tennessee I walked a tunnel under dogwood trees, noting the petals (in fours like crosses) and at each tender apex four russet stains dark at Christ-wounds. I knew that with the year the dogwood flower heads would ripen into berry clusters bright as drops of gore.

Last week, a double-click on Botany startled me with the kinship of those trees and bunch-berries, whose densely crowded mat carpets the deep woods around my valley cabin. Only their flowers--those white quartets of petals-- suggest the blood relationship. Since then I see

the miniature leaves and buds as tips of trees burgeoning underground, knotted roots like limbs pushing up to light through rock and humus. The pure cross-flowers at my feet redeem their long, dark burial in the ground, show how even a weight of stony soil cannot keep Easter at bay.

me with its likeness to our cosmic bubble, all greens and blues, each continent and sea etched in bright enamel by God and gravity-- a film's fine iridescence fixed. The trouble

is: before the shivering, frail balloon has hovered long it bursts in a star of spray that pricks my skin with cool fireworks, so that, in vanishing, it winks at my comparison just as the simile is offered.

But mind's a watercolor paper. This visual spasm has brushed me with its indelible, swift rainbow strokes of form and gleam. My visions shift between the micro- and the macrocosm,

ephemeral both, as radiant as grace, glass globules in the furnace air, both sealed off after a creative breath, and then annealed, floating their minor vessels into space.

Reading these poems awakens us to the wonder of the world around us and, if we've a mind to allow it, transforms the mundane into the miraculous. You can't help but observe your surroundings more closely and ponder existence more fiercely. And it's certainly possible that you'll choose to be the kind of person who views it all as lucky chance and insists we're alone and nothing means anything. But, there's also a possibility that you too will see signs and miracles and be infused with hope. Ms Shaw enhances the latter possibility. Her poems, in that sense, are an extraordinary gift to the reader.

A Breath of Fresh Air Feb 2, 2002

Luci Shaw's poetry speaks straight into one's soul. She takes ideas and lights them up with unforgetable images. She is an artist who knows herself and her God and communicates her heart in the beautiful words she uses. I can think of nothing more enjoyable than curling up on a couch or relaxing at the beach with her poems in my hand. Thankyou Luci for enriching my life! (It began with "Listen to the Green" in the 70's - more please!)

Luci Shaw is something rare in a Christian poet. Sep 8, 2001

So much of the Christian poetry I've read is doggerel, usually dripping with sentimentality and cliche. So much modern poetry is so narrowly within the author's own head that you can scarcely connect with the images. Shaw, on the other hand, is what the average pedestrian really yearns for in a poet. Her poetry is always accessible, yet fresh with new ways of saying things. She helps you see the world. Her images sparkle and dance in your mind. Here's an example: "What word informs the world, / and moves the worm along in his blind tunnel? / What secret purple wisdom tells the iris edges / to unfurl in frills? What juiced and emerald thrill / urges the sap until the bud resolves / its tight riddle? . . . What silver sound / thaws winter into spring? Speaks clamor into singing? / Gives love for loneliness? It is this / unterrestrial pulse, deep as heaven, that folds you / in its tingling embrace, gongs in your echo heart."

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